Where in West S.F.?

By Paul Judge

There’s one thing for certain about the Outside Lands: there is a heck of a lot of sand beneath its thoroughfares, parks, and blocks of homes and buildings.

Seeing our mystery image, reader Roger Goldberg hunched that it might be the Standard Oil “lighthouse” service station on the northeast corner of Point Lobos Avenue and 48th Avenue/El Camino Del Mar. Actually, this is the eastern end of the Richmond District that portrays a landscape undergoing change in the mid-1940s. The photo was taken from the top of the Bekins Storage building at 2690 Geary Boulevard, which was built in 1923 and is a Public Storage building today. Looking southeast, the image shows a cleared Calvary Cemetery, its many graves relocated to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.

What is to come on this sandy lot after the photo was taken? The Sears, Roebuck and Co. department store opened in 1951 and stood for decades at Geary and Masonic. Downhill further east on Geary, Kaiser Permanente Hospital was built in 1952. Many mid-century kids remember both these establishments: savoring the smell of popcorn wafting from the candy counter while browsing aisles of merchandise, or perhaps receiving polio vaccinations or having their tonsils removed at Kaiser. In the background of our mystery image, further south, the Anza Vista residential development will be built, typical of the post-World War II housing construction that infilled the west side of the city.

The old Sears building has since been renovated into the City Center shopping complex, now anchored by Target. Nicole Meldahl, David Gallagher, and Woody LaBounty discussed the significance of this Sears in Outside Lands podcast #407. In the 2018 second quarter issue of this magazine, Woody wrote about granite curbs and tombstones originating from Calvary Cemetery that were excavated earlier that year from a portion of the old Sears parking lot.

View southeast from Geary and Masonic, mid-1940s. (Bill Kostura Collection; courtesy of a Private Collector / wnp26.1401)

Bekins Storage building on the northwest corner of Geary and Masonic, January 9, 1949. (Photo by L.L. Bonney; courtesy of a Private Collector / wnp28.1770)

Sears store on the southeast corner of Geary and Masonic, July 31, 1956. (Photo by George McLane; courtesy of a Private Collector / wnp27.50448)

Charlie hoped to get aloft for a current aerial view, but only his ears took flight. (Courtesy of Margaret Ostermann)

Super-sleuth duo Margaret Ostermann and her canine history partner Charlie sussed out more than just the location of this photo. With no visible branding on the service station, curiosity sent Margaret poking through the 1946 Assessor’s block book. It revealed that the southeast corner lot on Geary and Masonic was a Union Oil Company service station, which was confirmed in a city directory of the era as 2699 Geary. Armed with a numbered address, a snoop through the San Francisco Chronicle archives pulled up some naughty activity at this little station. In 1944, station operator George E. Hopkins was “charged with possession of 162 counterfeit [gasoline] coupons.”1 Hopkins’s fake C-2 ration coupons were of the class issued to those deemed essential to the war effort, such as doctors and mail carriers. The service station was torn down by 1948, and the entire block carved back, to accommodate the widening curve of the Masonic Avenue roadway.

1. “Two S.F. Men Face Gasoline Charges,” San Francisco Chronicle,

July 23, 1944.

Let’s take a ride for the next photo quiz!

Send your guesses to nicole@outsidelands.org